The 20X Church Mission Field

We are living through the biggest communication shift in 500 years. We see this reflected in companies like Disney and Netflix, and churches are not immune. Brady talks about how this changes the way you do outreach.

The Transcript

Alex Mills: Well, hey there, and welcome to Pro Church Daily, the show where in 10 minutes or less you’re going to get a daily dose of tips and tactics to help your church share the message of Jesus while we try and navigate the biggest communication shift that we’ve seen in the last 500 years. I’m your host, Alex Mills, joined as always by the boss man, it’s Brady Shearer. Today we’re talking about the 20 times Church Mission Field.

Brady Shearer: In 2009, Alex, a company called Disney, don’t know if you’re familiar with them.

Alex Mills: Briefly familiar.

Brady Shearer: Made a purchase, made an acquisition for the franchise of Marvel for $4 billion. Similarly, in 2012, also for $4 billion Disney purchased another franchise called Star Wars.

Alex Mills: Disney seems to have a little bit of disposable income.

Brady Shearer: Little disposable income, little bit of influence. Right now they’re in the process, in the proposition acquisition process, of acquiring 21st Century Fox for right around $50 billion. A lot of billions. Disney has many theme parks as we all know. It also sells consumer products, action figures and the like. Yet, despite all of this, and despite Disney’s current market valuation of about $148 billion, it was reported this week by Bloomberg that a small startup company, that is only 11 years old, known as-

Alex Mills: Pro Church Tools.

Brady Shearer: Pro Church Tools.

Alex Mills: No, not quite.

Brady Shearer: Known as Netflix, a company that started by sending you DVDs through the mail, has a greater market valuation in 2018, at $153 billion, greater than that of the colossal, gigantic, majestic beast that is Disney. This is just another amazing, remarkable example of the world that we are living [inaudible 00:02:47]. The biggest communication shift in the last 500 years. The fact that a company that’s just about a decade old, that has a single product, a single streaming service, because they’re no longer actually sending DVDs in the mail, a single streaming service, that costs and charges its users about $10 a month, could overcome in market valuation a conglomerate like Disney is the perfect demonstration of the crazy culture that we are living in currently.

Brady Shearer: Now, there are a couple disclaimers to make, that being that Disney is wildly more profitable than Netflix, and that’s a necessity. If you are trying to take down Goliath, you’ve got to spend like crazy, you cannot become the size that Netflix has without spending like crazy, and they’ve been running a deficit for a while. They’re also … The caveat that Disney is planning on launching its own streaming service, and that it could, and very well likely, could overtake Netflix once again. The point isn’t really who is leveraging the communication shift, the point is the communication shift, the medium itself, not who’s leveraging it. Because for Disney to now overtake Netflix once again, they’re going to need to play the same game that Netflix is playing.

Brady Shearer: What’s happening is that you have a 10-year-old startup that is forcing one of the biggest media companies in the history of America and the world to shift its entire content strategy to keep up with this small upstart. At this point, Netflix is not a small upstart, but they’re also only a decade old. They’re just one of the many companies that did not exist 10, 12, 15 years algo, along with Facebook and Airbnb and Uber. What’s fascinating about these communication shifts is that at the end of the day, Amazon should not have had the upstart and the headstart on Walmart and on retail.

Brady Shearer: Netflix should not have had a headstart on Blockbuster. Small digital media and digital photography companies should not have had the upstart on Kodak. All of these companies, these big conglomerates, Walmart, and Blockbuster, and Kodak, they should’ve been able to see what was coming and adjust as necessary. But this is kind of the [inaudible 00:04:57] what I’m trying to get at, that when things have been working for you for a very long time in a certain way, it’s very difficult to make a change.

Alex Mills: Especially in church. You get into a rhythm at church, you get into a system of doing church, what you Sunday mornings look like. Things are going well, you’re seeing results, maybe you’re seeing increased numbers at your life groups, or you’re seeing salvations, or whatever metrics you’re tracking. You realize, “Oh, this is working,” then you just keep doing that for a while. So maybe it’s five years, maybe it’s 10 years, 15 years, but you’ve had your head down for so long, just doing the same old stuff that you look out for a second, “Oh, the world is way different than it was 10 years ago when all that stuff was working.” Not to say that any of that stuff is inherently wrong, but there’s new opportunities. Netflix couldn’t have existed or even succeeded 15 years ago, or 20 years ago, but they came in with this timely medium of streaming, and took an opportunity.

Alex Mills: The success, the raging success of Netflix it’s reflected in these numbers, it’s outstanding, it’s incredible on these other companies that have had a lot of success like the ones you mentioned, Walmart, Disney, Blockbuster. They had a good thing going, but because they weren’t open to evolution, evolving with technology, they kind of got left in the dust. That’s what we’re seeing in so many industries right now, is all of these what were major players in these major markets are reeling and scrambling and trying to figure out how to catch up, because they just kind of got left behind in the dust a little bit. So all the more reason to always be looking ahead and making use of all these great opportunities we have because of technology to share our message. For churches, the message of Jesus, and for Netflix, it’s romcoms, or whatever-

Brady Shearer: Lost in Space.

Alex Mills: Yeah. For Amazon, it’s sending toilet paper to your house. But it’s like whatever it is, technology is making a way for us to do this differently and oftentimes better. This is an incredible opportunity we have before us today.

Brady Shearer: Here’s the bottom line. Churches are not immune to this change. One easy way of showing this, and demonstrating this, I mean, the title of this episode of Pro Church Daily is the 20x Church Mission Field. Let’s look at a little bit of data. In 2000, the year 2000, only about five in 10 American adults were online. The average time spent online per American adult was 9.4 hours. You fast forward to 2017, and that number has ballooned to an average of 23.6 hours spent online each week. 17.6 of those hours are at home. We spend a lot of time at work online, but in our home hours, an average of almost 18 hours every single week. Now, more than nine in 10 American adults are online.

Brady Shearer: If you consider that the average person that’s attending church maybe comes once every other week, if we’re being generous, let’s say that every single week the average person in your congregation is spending one hour in your church. They’re spending about 20 times more of that time online.

Alex Mills: Yeah, somewhere else.

Brady Shearer: 20 times more hours, 20 times more time elsewhere than in your church. That means that the mission field of digital and online is greater, and unrivaled, and unprecedented than any other area in human history. We have the chance to reach people where they are. If we’re not able to do this, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to look back in 10 years at the missed opportunity. Because right now, we are pioneers in a new land. We just landed and we didn’t … you know, in 50 years, Malibu real estate is going to be a lot more expensive and valuable than it is right now. But we can be the early movers. When I say early movers, it’s 2018, it’s not that early, but in the scope of history and decades, this still is early. This is not going away. This is the beginning, this is the precipice of this change.

Brady Shearer: If we’re not able to evaluate the way that we’re doing church, and the way that we’re accomplishing our mission statements, helping people to love God, love others, and make disciples. If we’re not willing to reevaluate and make significant changes, we’re not going to be able to get to where we need to go, and we’re going to look back with regret. This is why we need more church planters, and more people willing to do experimental things that maybe older churches, for better or for worse, are not able to do, because change is difficult. I don’t think it’s unfair to look at all the companies that are massive, they were unable to make changes, and think there are going to be so many churches that are unable to make those changes. We need people that are forcing this and pushing the limit.

Brady Shearer: Because if we don’t, if we just stay resting on our laurels, and if we stay okay with the status quo, we’re going to be in vulnerable positions.

Alex Mills: Yeah, we don’t want to look back in 10 years with regret on this, on 2018, and this time period, as far as the mission field is concerned. Because right now, with all the information we have, and we talk a lot about statistics on this show, but we know where the people are. It’s not a guessing a game, it’s not like we don’t know and we’ll look back in 10 years and say, hindsight, it’s 2020, like, “If only we would’ve known then.” No, we actually do know now. We know where people are spending their time on the internet, and we know how to reach them through Facebook Ads, and through all these free social tools. It’s cheap now, who knows what it’s going to look like in 10 years. Now is the time. You have all the information that you need, you have all the stats that you need. Everything is available to us now. We’re well-informed enough now that we’re not going to be able to look back in 10 years and be like, “Well, we just didn’t know.” Actually, we do know.

Brady Shearer: Time to move. That’ll do it for today’s episode of Pro Church Daily. We’ll see you next time.